liberal fail!

Ontario is in for a Very Rough Ride….and they asked for it!

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Kathleen Wynne’s reality: Ontario’s massive debt cannot be ignored

 Theresa Tedesco | June 12, 2014 | Last Updated: Jun 13 8:41 AM ET

Ontario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne speaks to supporters after winning the Ontario election in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014.

Frank Gunn/The Canadian PressOntario Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne speaks to supporters after winning the Ontario election in Toronto on Thursday June 12, 2014.

Now that voters have returned Kathleen Wynne to power, the premier will need to find a way to manage a debt load that is larger than California’s while continuing to keep the credit rating agencies mollified long enough to avoid a dreaded downgrade.

With a net debt of $267.5-billion that is growing at a faster rate than the economy, the challenge is just beginning for the party that emerged victorious from the provincial election. “They are still going to be facing pressures from the credit agencies to get the province’s fiscal finances in order,” said Mazen Issa, senior Canada macro strategist at TD Securities in Toronto. “There’s no way to avoid it. The reality is there and it can’t be wished away.”

Put simply, Ontario is increasingly dependent on tapping lines of credit because it spends more than it collects. Currently, the province pays $11-billion annually in interest payments to finance its debt — money that is not going toward paving roads, building public transit, hiring more teachers and shortening wait times in hospitals.

During the 40-day election campaign, which focused predominantly on the economy, the three main parties offered a stark choice: Conservative leader Tim Hudak vowed to cut 100,000 public-sector jobs over four years and lower corporate taxes to kick-start the creation of one million jobs in eight years while balancing the budget in two.

The New Democrat and Liberal parties both promised to loosen the provincial purse strings further and increase spending for at least two years by borrowing more money and increasing taxes. NDP leader Andrea Horwath promised to offer wage subsidies to businesses to hire new workers, slash auto insurance rates and cut government spending by $600-million annually although she wouldn’t say how she would balance the books in three years.

Liberal leader Wynne also promised to balance the budget by 2017 and she too was vague on details of cost cutting, prompting critics to accuse both parties of pinning their hopes on unusually robust economic growth in the range of 2.8% to 4.7% to pump up government coffers.

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“It’s a bit of a Hail Mary to hope the economy will recover so much that it will take care of the problem,” said Candice Malcolm, Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Association. “It’s a huge hole to come out of and it’s going to require tough measures, including looking seriously at the spending side.”

Ms. Malcolm believes that the premier will not be given much time to make drastic spending cuts before credit rating agencies and bond markets begin to force her hand. Finn Poschmann, vice-president of policy at the C.D. Howe Institute, concurs: “Certainly the pressure is there for a downgrade. To balance the budget in two or three years will take sharp measures and that is a difficult task.”

Next year, the province’s net debt is forecast to jump by 7.7%, faster than the 4% economic growth rate anticipated during the same time. Still, while Ontario may be carrying more debt than California, long considered the poster child for poor fiscal management, Moody’s Investor Services Inc. has nonetheless applied a slightly higher — and more favourable — credit rating of Aa2 (the third-highest investment grade rating) to Canada’s largest province. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor’s has slapped a lower AA-rating with a negative outlook for Ontario.

Meanwhile, there are signs of pressure that a downgrade is inevitable. For one, Ontario has $250-billion worth of bonds rated by Moody’s, the most of any sub-sovereign borrower tracked by the New York-based ratings company, according to Bloomberg. The province’s ability to pay back those bonds, known as the debt-to-revenue ratio, is 237.7% — the worst among all Canadian provinces, including Quebec, according to a Moody’s report. Alberta ranked lowest — and the best — with a debt-to-revenue ratio of 31.9%.

Michael Yake, assistant vice-president at Moody’s Toronto, explained the rating agency’s concerns in an interview: “We see deficits narrowing at a lower pace but in Ontario, they are growing from previous forecasts. That’s not an ideal situation from our point of view.”

And that is worrisome for a province that borrows as much as Ontario. A future downgrade would result in higher borrowing costs, adding billions more to the debt-to-revenue ratio. Ontario currently spends 9.2% of its revenues on interest payments and provincial government estimates predict that figure will rise to almost 11% in the next four years. Keep in mind that interest rates have been at 20-year low levels and will inevitably rise if the economy grows at a faster clip.

The cost of carrying that debt will also skyrocket, as much as $3-billion in annual interest costs for every point increase in interest rates, according to Jack Mintz, the Palmer chair and director of the School of Policy at the University of Calgary. The bottom line: more money will be earmarked for servicing the debt and less spending for vital services.

“It’s been an issue that has been lingering for several years,” said TD’s Mr. Issa. “Some very tough decisions are going to have to be made to get the books in order.”

Wind Energy is a Dreamer’s folly. Just a money pit!

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Robert Bryce’s new book slays the wind power Easter Bunny

June 13, 2014 by 

Easter-Bunny-Wallpapers-HD

Robert Bryce picked the wind power fraud for what it is from the very beginning.

In his 2010 book “Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future” (Public Affairs), Bryce skewered every one of the myths relied upon by the wind industry to peddle its wares; and went on to predict the massive benefits of the US shale gas revolution – in terms of both cheap energy – operating as a boost to a flagging economy – and as a method of reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector.

We’ve covered some of his recent writings on US energy policy and the wind power fraud (see our posts here and here and here).

Bryce has just published another cracking book “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong” (Public Affairs) that loads up on the nonsense that is US energy policy today.

Here’s a review of Bryce’s latest by the New York Times.

Wind? Biofuels? Get Real, a Contrarian Says
Review of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper
The New York Times
7 June 2014

Every so often we need someone to put in a kind word for the devil, if only to remind us of unpleasant facts. On energy policy, we need someone willing to declare flat out that “if oil didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. No other substance comes close to oil when it comes to energy density, ease of handling, and flexibility.”

We need someone who says: Don’t kid yourself, coal will be around for a long, long time, as a cheap source of electricity across the globe. Someone who scoffs that anyone who believes in wind power and biofuels as a solution to the soaring demand for energy also believes in the Easter Bunny. And someone willing to argue that the most sensible long-term answer to the world’s unquenchable thirst for electricity is a revival of nuclear power, a reality that he says thinking environmentalists are coming to accept.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, fills that role with zest. The author of four books on oil and energy, Mr. Bryce has written a new book well worth reading, though it will not sit well with those who applauded when Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his breezy book — “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper” — captures the headlong rush of Western culture’s endless drive for ever better technology. It is an extraordinary impulse that has created a world in which more people live longer and more comfortably than ever before.

The book amounts to Mr. Bryce’s emphatic, against-the-grain views on energy policy coupled to a once-over-lightly history of Western technology. His eccentric take on history bounces from the Panama Canal to Edison’s light bulb to the first computers, weirdly wrapping in excerpts on the AK-47 Kalashnikov automatic rifle, Olympic 100 meter times, and the Tour de France. He introduces puzzling techno-terms like “attoseconds,” which are billionths of a billionth of a second. (That, astonishingly, is the scale of time used in laser snapshots of the inner workings of an atom.) His historical vignettes do illustrate the benefits of Smaller Faster, etc., but they are like making an entire meal of amuse-bouches.

Mr. Bryce’s policy prescriptions will be more welcome in Houston than in the White House. He contends that the pantheon of environmentalists like Mr. Gore, Bill McKibben, Amory Lovins and Greenpeace — he calls them “the catastrophists” — are wildly optimistic, if not daft, in their extravagant hopes for wind power, solar cells and biofuels. He insists that his differences with them are not ideological but purely physics and economics: that their alternative possibilities are inherently too weak as fuels to scale them up to meet the world’s unceasing demand for more electricity.

From studies of wind farms he calculates that the average power density for wind energy is about one watt per square meter. A wind farm large enough to power just one data center for Facebook would require nearly 11 square miles of land, he says. On a far larger scale, the United States has about 300 billion watts of coal-fired generation capacity. So to replace it by wind power would sop up 300,000 square kilometers of land, about the area of Italy. Here he is tilting at windmills — no one has ever proposed shuttering the nation’s coal mines and relying on wind — but the comparison serves his contention that in the big picture, wind power will always be a minor player.

Biofuels have a power density even smaller, only a third of wind’s, and thus they hog even more land, he writes. Mr. Bryce considers it a scandal and a gross misuse of government subsidies that 40 percent of the nation’s corn harvest already goes into producing corn-based ethanol, pushing food prices much higher as collateral damage.

He pounces on Mr. Lovins’s prediction that by 2050, the United States will draw 23 percent of its power from biofuels. That is “ludicrous beyond language,” he says. If an acre of switchgrass yields about 17 barrels of oil equivalent a year, then achieving that 23 percent would take up 342,000 square miles of cropland, the equivalent of Texas, New York and Ohio combined, he calculates.

Mr. Bryce knows his way around an oil field, and he writes authoritatively about the constantly improving technology of extracting oil and gas. Thanks to those improvements, estimates of oil and gas reserves have shot up, defying repeated predictions that they were on the verge of topping out. Comparable innovations in wind energy or biofuels just aren’t possible, he maintains.

Disappointing for a man so sure of other data, Mr. Bryce waffles on the critical point of global warming. He declares himself a resolute “climate agnostic,” despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is a reality. Environmentalists might well see this as a convenient way to skirt the issue of the fossil fuel industry’s responsibility for endangering the planet.

He says he is neither an “alarmist” (a revealing choice of words) nor a “denier,” but tries to patch together an “incontrovertible” climate outlook that both “tribes” can accept: Carbon dioxide emissions are rising, dramatically so, and that will continue; the world will need vastly more energy in the decades ahead to raise the living standards of those in poverty; and if ever we needed smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper, the time is now.

Mr. Bryce’s solution is “N2N,” a reliance on natural gas on the way to a more nuclear world. He is not the first to note that natural gas is relatively clean and available in extraordinary abundance. It generates electricity; it is the coming thing in propelling vehicles. Its use is already cutting CO2 emissions in the United States.

Mr. Bryce makes a case that nuclear power is clean and green and far superior to any other fuel in power density. His enthusiastic embrace of nuclear will astonish most readers, however, with his contention that the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan should be seen as a boon to the revival of nuclear power, rather than an obstacle.

At Fukushima, three reactors melted down with a substantial release of radiation, forcing as many as 300,000 people from their homes, and leaving still unresolved problems of cleaning up massive amounts of radioactive water. And yet, Mr. Bryce writes, even though the plant was wrecked by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever to rock the planet, the World Health Organization has concluded that radiation exposure due to Fukushima was low. No lives were lost to radiation — at least none so far.

Mr. Bryce is decidedly bullish on America, not least because of what’s happening in the oil patch. America enjoys the cheapest power in the industrial world, at 12 cents a kilowatt hour versus 26 cents in Europe and 24 cents in Japan. It leads the world in natural gas production, nuclear production and refined oil output. Thanks to the oil shale, it could soon eclipse Saudi Arabia and Russia in crude oil.

“The best way to protect the environment is to get richer,” he asserts. “Wealthy countries can afford to protect the environment. Poor ones generally can’t.”
The New York Times

chicken-little-poster

Let’s assume (as STT does, for the sake of argument) that the global warming/climate change Chicken Littles are right: the sky really is falling and it’s all CO2’s fault.

So what the HELL are we doing pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidies for wind power? (see our posts here and here)

STT has always thought that if man-made CO2 emissions really were destroying the planet, then sensible governments would have moved to build nuclear power plants from the moment Chicken Little started wailing about the heavens collapsing. It’s a theme that Robert Bryce covered in “Power Hungry” and expands upon in his latest effort.

The French generate around 80% of their sparks using nukes – and have used nuclear power – without any serious incident – for over 50 years: the first plant kicked off in 1962.

Nuclear power is the only stand-alone thermal power source that is base-load and which does not emit CO2 emissions when generating power.

STT readers know that we are a big fan of hydro power, the development of which stalled after the Greens “No Dams” mantra shot them to political power (and see our previous post).  The perversities of our renewable energy legislation mean that the cleanest and most reliable source of renewable energy – hydro – does not benefit from the incentives given to ludicrously expensive and completely unreliable wind power.  That’s right, the “Waterboys” don’t get RECs (only hydro generating capacity built after 1998 is eligible – the 99% of total hydro capacity that was built before then gets nothing).

There is huge potential for further investment in hydro power in Australia – all up and down the Great Divide – bringing with it the ability to harvest huge volumes of water in times of flood – and to beneficially manage that water during periods of drought. However, the perverse nature of the mandatory RET provides every advantage to unreliable and costly wind power at the expense of hydro power: the former takes a matter of months to construct and begin earning revenue (ie RECs); whereas the latter takes years and sometimes decades to complete and for investors to start earning a return (see this video). Investors looking for a quick return on their cash have simply plumped for the soft option and piled in to wind power, with disastrous results on every level (see our post here).

The nuclear power debate has revved up in recent times, with numerous leaders of green groups coming out in favour of nukes as the only sensible answer to generating CO2 free sparks.  These boys have been rounded on by their own kind as “heretics” in a style more befitting of the Spanish Inquisition.

The nuke debate is one that STT will leave to others. Anyone considering taking it up should start with Robert Bryce’s latest.

Smaller Faster Bryce

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Matt Gurney: Throw the Liberals out

 Matt Gurney | June 11, 2014 

It's hard to imagine a party in more desperate need of a long, restorative spell in the wilderness.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank GunnIt’s hard to imagine a party in more desperate need of a long, restorative spell in the wilderness.

Tomorrow, June 12, is election day in Ontario. The polls are, to say the least, unclear. No one has any idea what is going to happen. As one person, who does “stakeholder relations” work for clients in Ontario, recently told me, the smart money is planning on six possible outcomes: A Tory minority or majority, a Liberal minority or majority, or an NDP minority or majority. It really could be any of those.

National Post editorial board: A Conservative government for Ontario

It is difficult to overstate just how richly the Ontario Liberals deserve to be removed from office. It is difficult even to know where to begin.

As managers of public services they are, in the most charitable interpretation, famously inept. Witness the scandal at ORNGE, the non-profit set up to run the province’s air ambulance service, which soon devolved into a byzantine scheme to redirect public money into various private wallets. Witness the scandal at eHealth, which the auditor general found to have spent $1-billion comprehensively bungling efforts to create an electronic health records system. Witness former premier Dalton McGuinty’s signature green-energy initiative, which has seen electricity rates skyrocket even as the province exports electricity at a huge loss.

Continue reading…

The campaign has not been a particularly edifying one. Don’t be surprised if turnout is low — perhaps historically so. But such an outcome, while perhaps understandable, would also be unfortunate. This may not be an exciting election, or one that has seen much thoughtful debate and entertaining oratory, but it’s an important one. Ontario is currently governed by a party that has behaved, time and again, in a fashion that is nothing short of appalling. If the Liberals are re-elected come Thursday, Ontarians will have chosen exactly the government that they deserve.

I’d need a dozen columns to even begin to scratch the surface of just how deserving of a crushing defeat the Ontario Liberals are. Even a brief overview would run into the thousands of words. So, just for those who need a little reminder, recall that this is the government that promised, before being first elected 11 years ago, to not raise taxes, and then immediately raised taxes. Rather than say that the province’s unexpectedly poor fiscal status required such action, the former premier, Dalton McGuinty, tried to convince Ontarians that he hadn’t raised taxes, but merely imposed a premium to fund health care — and then, when it turned out public sector union contracts left the government on the hook for premiums, McGuinty had to publicly stress taxpayers were on the hook for them. Because it was, you know … a tax.

This is the government that established a green energy sector that Ontarians will spend decades paying above market rates for, to provide power beyond what the province currently requires, and that we must export at a loss for lack of any other option. It now subsidizes monthly hydro bills for all but the most voracious consumers of power rather than let the true costs show up in our mailboxes each month — but they don’t call it a subsidy, of course. It’s the “Ontario Green Energy Benefit.”

The Liberals have run a government that lied, repeatedly and for years, about what the economic cost of harmonizing the provincial sales tax with the federal GST would be — an entirely defensible policy that the Liberals, for some reason, pretended would not end up costing Ontario families more … which they later admitted it would. It’s a government that suddenly imposed an eco-tax on consumers — surprise! — and only backed off after the public noticed and became outraged. It’s a government that has committed to billions in ongoing spending by allowing the unionized broader public service to expand far faster than inflation and population growth would warrant, all in the name of buying “labour peace.” That labour peace, it should be noted, ended the instant the Liberals mused about slowing the volleys of cash being hurled the unions’ way. I guess it was more like renting labour peace.

While they were fighting all these battles, Ontario blew a billion bucks in a futile effort to create electronic health records

It’s a government that never saw a minor social irritant it didn’t want to legislate away. Under the Liberals, we’ve seen restrictions on junk food and trans fats in schools, bans on harmless garden-variety (literally) pesticides, and repeated crackdowns on tobacco sales and smoking in cars containing children, even though the children themselves can light up in the car without the police saying boo. It’s a government that considered enforcing a little-known, always-ignored provincial regulation requiring that sushi only be made with previously frozen seafood, but had to settle for banning pitbulls and teens in tanning beds, instead. While they were fighting all these battles, Ontario blew a billion bucks in a futile effort to create electronic health records and became a have-not province, but oh well. Don’t those dandelions on your lawn look fantastic?

The Liberals are a government that ran an air ambulance service that was better at streaming public dollars toward Liberal-friendly executives than it was at rescuing people using helicopters that were unsuited to the role, but sure looked pretty. It’s a government that spent perhaps as much as $1-billion public dollars cancelling two gas-fired power plants that it had previously vocally championed, once polls showed they might lose a couple of seats due to local opposition. Oh, and it’s a government that wrote off the entire town of Caledonia to lawlessness because it didn’t like the optics of sending in mostly white provincial police officers to deal with a small number of native thugs who were assaulting people and destroying property — crimes — during a land ownership dispute. McGuinty called it “peacekeeping.” When I asked him why police were tasked with peacekeeping, which is the military’s job, instead of enforcing the laws equally for all citizens, he shrugged and had no answer.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren CalabreseOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne, left, and Glen Murray, Minister of Infrastructure, ride the subway while en route to Wynne’s speech at the Toronto Region Board of Trade in Toronto Monday, April 14, 2014.

The Ontario Liberals have a new leader now — Kathleen Wynne. She acknowledges that a lot of bad things happened under her predecessor’s watch, and even that she was involved with some of them. She had no choice, she insists, since she was “part of a government.”

It’s not quite “I was only following orders,” but it’s damn near close enough.

In a perfect world, Ontarians would have plenty of terrific options to choose from when searching for a replacement. But they don’t. Both the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives leave a lot to be desired. It’s entirely reasonable for Ontarians to be underwhelmed at what awaits them in their polling stations.

But a vote for either the Tories or the NDP is still better than a vote for the party that brought us everything recapped above, and so much more. It’s hard to imagine a party in more desperate need of a long, restorative spell in the wilderness of opposition than the Ontario Liberals. A vote for them is an endorsement of their record of mismanagement, waste and meddling. If Ontario returns another Liberal government, that record will continue, and that will be exactly what Canada’s most populous province deserves.

National Post

Read This Before You Vote…..Our Province Depends On It!

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That is something worth voting for

on Election Day.

by lsarc

If you are in business you understand the bottom line.

You probably realize that cheap and reliable electricity enabled Ontario’s prosperity and destroying that advantage eventually destroys even our ability to protect the environment.

Just as cold drives people to desperate means in order to heat their homes, there are serious life consequences to political profiteering with our energy system.

In just the latest act in the ongoing series of Liberal legal dramas, Mesa Power is seeking$653-million in damages under a NAFTA challenge.

If you are keeping a tally… this is in addition the $475-million lawsuit by Windstream Energy and the $2.25-billion by Trillium Power Wind Corp.

Mesa Power’s court filing alleges that senior Kathleen Wynne campaign advisor, Bob Lopinski, who was representing multinational renewables firm NextEra, bent the rules to help the client of a prominent Liberal lobbyist to more than $2-billion worth of power contracts, thereby bumping Mesa’s projects out of line, costing it sunk costs and lost future profits through “political favouritism, cronyism and local preference.”

If you are a parent or a teacher you understand that you can’t get away with saying, “Do as I say, not as I do!” without losing a bit of credibility each time.

You do that and you are teaching that the rules don’t apply.

The Liberal scandals are a result of those who “govern” us ignoring the rules and regulations which are meant protect our society.

In no particular order, here are some of the top Liberal scandals:

– Children’s Aid Society – made off with huge executive salaries, perks, and the children suffered.

– OLG scam – cheated the public through sole-sourced contracts and insider wins.

– Smart meter – TOU (Time Of Use) savings which have not materialized for 80% of customers whose rates keep rising.

– Slush fund – funnelling $32 million to Liberal-friendly organizations, the Auditor General described it as the worst ever lack of process or accountability.

– “Green” energy – socially, environmentally and economically destructive even as constraint payments are added.

– ORNGE Air – nepotism, bonuses, salaries, poor service and now 17 charges laid for resulting deaths

– eHealth database – cost billions for consulting, salaries, bonuses, untendered contracts- for nothing

– Gas Plants-waste and even more scandalous cover-up

“Sorry” doesn’t cut it when the same disrespect for the public purse is replayed in every deal which benefits Liberal cronies… and it does not stop! Kathleen Wynne’s “safe hands” try to conceal yet another boondoggle playing out in Toronto.

In his Financial Post article – “MaRS, the Ontario government’s very own money pit” – retired banker Parker Gallant exposes the creative accounting exercise in which the Liberals are currently engaged.

“The MaRS story raises doubts about the $4.2-billion in loans that IO (Infrastructure Ontario) had on its books at March 31, 2012. What are the updated risk qualifications on all of IO’s obligations?
It’s time for the Auditor General to conduct a review of both Infrastructure Ontario and the MaRS Discovery District and provide the taxpayers of the Province with the true picture of their financial position.”

One can’t honestly imagine how Tim Hudak could possibly be scarier than the status quo.

OPSEU’s Smokey Thomas believes Kathleen Wynne is lying and will cut at least 30,000 public sector jobs; he says at least Hudak is “honest and straightforward”.

That is something worth voting for on Election Day.

Another Chance to see the Awesome Documentary….DownWind! Wed. June 11, @ 8pm.

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Speaking of movies, DOWN WIND airs tomorrow at 8pm ET. A tell-all about the Ontario green energy scam!

Whether you are watching it again, or seeing it for the first time, this movie is a must-see!  You will be amazed that

this kind of scam, could be perpetrated, on such a wide scale!  Everyone should watch this, before voting!!!

Renewable Energy is a Novelty Form of Energy, Not Fit for Everyday Use!

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Britain readies ‘last resort’ measures to keep the lights on

National Grid to begin recruiting businesses who will be paid to

switch off if needed to protect consumer supplies as a “last resort”

Ed Miliband's price pledge threatens to bring forward Britain's energy crisis by a year, to winter 2014-2015, analsyts warn

“The lights are going to stay on,” Ed Davey said.
Britain may be forced to use “last resort” measures to avert blackouts in coming winters, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, will say on Tuesday.

Factories will be paid to switch off at times of peak demand in order to keep households’ lights on, if Britain’s dwindling power plants are unable to provide enough electricity, under the backstop measures from National Grid.

The Grid is expected to announce that it will begin recruiting businesses that will be paid tens of thousands of pounds each simply to agree to take part in its scheme. They will receive further payments if they are called upon to stop drawing power from the grid.

It is also expected to press ahead with plans to pay mothballed gas power plants to ready themselves to be fired up when needed.

“Both the new demand and supply balancing services will be used only as a last resort – and are a safety net to protect households in difficult circumstances, such as a hard winter or very high surges in demand,” Mr Davey will say.

What the Liberals Have Done to Our Province, Is Unforgivable!

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Opinion: Ontario is deeply in debt

The Liberal record on energy, health care and education

HYDRO

HYDRO

Hamilton Spectator

Energy is not a luxury, it’s a necessity, especially because of our Northern climate, says Ron Cirotto..
By Ron Cirotto

In a Comment page article May 23, Bryan Kerman compared apples to oranges in comparing Canadian provincial politics to American state politics. Let us look at the facts and forget about the past and the Mike Harris era. That was then, this is now, 2014. Now Ontario is a province deeply in debt and sitting on a poor credit rating and lavishly spending taxpayers’ money without consultation or proper bidding.

In simple numbers, after 10 years of Liberal government, Ontario has a provincial debt that has doubled from $150 billion to $300 billion. Ontario has increased yearly spending from $65 billion to $130 billion. Ontario, now in 2014, is running a $10 billion-plus deficit each year. Ontario’s population, now in 2014, is 13 million, up from 12 million a decade ago.

Where have all the jobs gone? Where has all the money gone?The size of provincial government has increased dramatically, along with the total provincial debt and yearly deficit. Yet, the population has only increased by about one million. Government mismanagement is the reason. There is plenty of opportunity to allow 100,000 government employees to be released by attrition over the next four to eight years. This means the well paid remaining government employees will have to work more efficiently just like the private sector.

Energy:

There is plenty of opportunity to allow 100,000 government employees to be released by attrition over the next four to eight years.

Energy is not a luxury, it’s a necessity, especially because of our Northern climate. Ontario’s growing population cannot cut back on energy usage to heat their homes, run their appliances or turn on the lights when it is dark. Steel mills or any manufacturing company cannot run a business on expensive electric power and try to compete internationally. The Ontario Liberals signed an untendered $19-billion electrical energy contract for 25 years with Samsung without a cost-benefit analysis.

For example, aluminum production companies are located near cheap electricity, as is the case in Northern Quebec. The excess electricity Ontario generates, it sells to Quebec at a loss, which resells it to the Northern New York power grid for a profit. A billion dollars-plus, wasted on cancelling two natural gas plants for political reasons. This is not responsible management of taxpayers’ money. This is a blatant example of misguided ideology, needlessly saving the planet on the taxpayers’ dime!

A billion dollars has been spent on smart meters, yet Ontario’s electricity rates are at 15 cents per kilowatt hour in Burlington and Hamilton. Before Dalton McGuinty took Ontario’s rudder, electricity was four cents per kilowatt hour. Currently there are 1,000 wind turbines in Ontario and another 5,000 planned and they will be forced upon municipalities by the Liberal government. Why did the Liberal government spend billions on the new tunnel at Niagara Falls to get inexpensive hydro electricity and still go ahead with very expensive wind turbines? Why did the government plow ahead with a solar panel installation in southern Ontario? They promised it would provide 300 jobs, yet when finished it provided only three jobs and they are low-paying security guard positions.

Health care:

Billions of dollars have been spent on an unfinished computerized eHealth database and taxpayers are still not reaping the benefits. Money has been wasted on the Ornge helicopter mess, an arms-length, government company that only benefitted its directors, not to mention the tragic Ornge helicopter crash that killed innocent people.

Privatization:

At one LCBO location, a union leader justifiably pointed out there are eight employees and 11 managers. This is insulting to taxpayers.

Religious Schools:

In his article, Kerman appeared to be intentionally regurgitating the religious school issue by alluding to a hidden Conservative “agenda,” saying at least one lobbyist is running under the Conservative banner in the provincial election, thus rekindling fear in the voters. Who is this lobbyist? Name him or her so that he or she can be questioned. Publicly funded private schools are not the same as publicly funded private religious schools. This so-called “short step” is scare mongering.

Ontario is in deep, deep financial trouble. Kathleen Wynne’s government needs to be replaced. When you vote on Thursday consider jobs, jobs and jobs. Please do some serious soul searching before voting.

 

Ron Cirotto, BASc., P.Eng., lives in Burlington.

Warren “Smokey” Thomas Says he Thinks Wynne is Lying. I think he’s right!

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http://bcove.me/t7izbk0h

TORONTO – Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne is lying when she says she will not cut public sector jobs, the top boss of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union said Tuesday.

Warren “Smokey” Thomas accused Wynne of burying $1.2 billion in cuts in the dead-on-arrival budget earlier this year.

“It’s in the fine print,” he said during an interview on Sun News Network, pointing out that at $40,000 for an average salary, the Liberal cuts would have chopped more than 30,000 jobs from the public payroll.

When asked if Wynne was lying, Thomas said: “Yes. In my personal opinion, yes, I think she is.”

The Liberal leader has campaigned as the saviour of public sector jobs, promising the public sector will be just as big four years from now if she’s elected.

But a Bloomberg report from last week found that Wynne’s budget would mean the biggest public service cuts since the time of Mike Harris.

Thomas says he wrote a letter to Wynne outlining his hope for $1.25 billion in budget savings.

He says he has asked Wynne exactly what she would cut to reach that number, in order to assuage OPSEU members who fear losing their jobs to cuts or privatization.

However, he says, he has yet to receive any specific answers, only assurances that Wynne would keep “public services public.”

“She’s not being straight with the people she employs. She’s not being straight with the people of Ontario about her plans,” Thomas says.

But Wynne has tried to scare voters with warnings that Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak would weaken government services with his plan to cut 100,000 government jobs. Thomas said at least Hudak is “honest and straightforward” with what’s he’s proposing to do.

Previously, Thomas has said he believes there could be as many as 60,000 middle management positions in the public sector that could be eliminated to find savings.

On Tuesday, Thomas said his union – the third largest in Ontario and the second largest public sector union in Canada – is “politically agnostic” and doesn’t get officially involved with any party. Personally, Thomas supports the NDP and said he’s already voted for that party in the advanced polls.

 

 

Tim Hudak is an Honest Man, and a Man of Compassion and Integrity. We Will be Lucky to Have Him!

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Hudak vows to protect people who ‘are falling through the cracks’

Credits: Mike DiBattista/Niagara Falls Review/QMI Agency

ANTONELLA ARTUSO | QMI AGENCY

TORONTO — Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak stressed his softer side Tuesday with a pledge to help people with disabilities and disadvantages realize their potential in the workforce.

At a campaign stop in Toronto, Hudak said his plan would deliver jobs for those who currently struggle to find work.

“Who’s closest to my heart? Those who are falling through the cracks today, those with disabilities, the disadvantaged, young people graduating from school with a lot of energy and hope but no job. That’s who I’m going to fight for every day,” Hudak said.

Hudak noted that 20 unions, many of them representing public sector workers, have joined with his political challengers in a barrage of negative messages about him and his party in the lead up to the June 12 vote.

His opponents would have voters believe that the sky would fall if the PCs gain government, he said.

“I’m going to set the record straight. The sun is still going to shine. Cows will still give milk. The sky’s still going to be blue,” he said.

The PCs have said they will not cut teachers or educational assistants who work with children with special needs, or social workers who help people with disabilities overcome their difficulties.

David Lepofsky, chair of the Alliance of Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, said the organization analyzed the commitments of the three major political parties.

Hudak, he said, has refused a request to protect regulations that ensure accessible workplaces for Ontarians with disabilities.

“We aren’t happy with any of the leaders,” he said. “With that, we have to say that Tim Hudak’s position on disability-accessibility is by far the weakest.

Hudak has said this issue is “personal” for him as one of his two daughters has developmental needs.

There is No End to the Mismanagement, Corruption, and Lies, from the Liberals!

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MaRS, the Ontario government’s very own money pit

Parker Gallant, Special to Financial Post | June 10, 2014 

All of Ontario's taxpayers will be saddled with the obligation to repay not only the bad debt of MaRS but also to fund other public entities who have signed on to occupy a portion of that high-cost Phase 2 building.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostAll of Ontario’s taxpayers will be saddled with the obligation to repay not only the bad debt of MaRS but also to fund other public entities who have signed on to occupy a portion of that high-cost Phase 2 building.

Those “premium tenants” are provincial entities that depend on the Ontario government for funding

Infrastructure Ontario (IO), an Ontario Crown corporation, provided financing of $235-million to fund the Phase 2 expansion of Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District. That loan is apparently now in default, a revelation that has had an impact on the current Ontario provincial election. What’s the story behind MaRS, which stands for Medical and Related Sciences?

Begin with Infrastructure Ontario’s March 31, 2012 annual report (the March 31, 2013, annual report has yet to be released, so never mind the 2014 report). In the 2012 report, it is difficult to find any information on the MaRS financing. On page 21 the name MaRS together with an amount of $153,612,000 is listed as “Outstanding” among a list of Tier 1, 2 and 3 risk-rated loans totaling over $4.2-billion. The MaRS loan is classified as a Tier 2 category risk under the heading “Credit Risk Mitigation,” which is described as: “Industries are either regulated or entitled to government based revenue contracts and therefore have a stable source of debt repayment.”

That description sounds reasonable, except that MaRS is neither “regulated” nor “entitled to government based revenue contracts.” MaRS is a “registered charity under the Income Tax Act” and therefore not “regulated” by the province nor “entitled to government based revenue contracts.”

As an entity, MaRS has been dependent on government largesse via grants (mainly from the Province of Ontario). Grants now exceed $160-million since MaRS was created.

It was never clear how a new building estimated to cost $344-million could be financed with a loan for $235-million. The expansion announcement July 26, 2011 by Glen Murray, then Minister of Research and Innovation, said nothing about the $109-million shortfall. At that time MaRS had a net worth of about $30-million and had lost money since its opening in 2005. An inquiry I sent to Mr. Murray about the shortfall back in September, 2011, received this response: “As far as Government of Ontario investments in MaRS are concerned, financial accountability has been paramount for monies that have been invested in MaRS over the past few years.”

Minister Murray also responded to my question on how the loan from MaRS would be repaid stating: “It is the revenue from the tenants of MaRS Phase 2 that will pay off the loan to Infrastructure Ontario – and, ultimately, allow MaRS Centre Phase 2 to pay for itself. Most of these tenants will be high-quality commercial entities paying market rates on their leases for what is regarded as premium science and technology space in downtown Toronto.”

So far, those “premium tenants” for MaRS “Phase 2” include Public Health Ontario (PHO) and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), provincial entities that depend on the Ontario government for funding. The former was an outgrowth of the 2003 SARS epidemic and set up by the McGuinty Liberals. In their first annual report of March 31, 2009, expenses were $36.7-million and 17 staff made the “sunshine list” earning more than $100,000 a year. The March 31, 2013, annual report shows expenses of $148-million, up 303%, and 81 staff made the “sunshine list”! IO is also providing $54-million in financing to PHO for a laboratory in the new MaRS building. The Province provided funds of $84.2-million to OICR in the year ended March 31, 2013.

Meanwhile, the “high-quality commercial entities paying market rates on their leases” have failed to materialize, leading to MaRS default!

All of Ontario’s taxpayers will be saddled with the obligation to repay not only the bad debt of MaRS but also to fund other public entities who have signed on to occupy a portion of that high-cost Phase 2 building. To summarize: the direct cost of the building was $344-million, the PHO lab will cost $54-million and the two tenants depend on receiving government funding of $235-million annually. Additionally, the estimated annual carrying costs will add another $113-million over 10 years that the taxpayers will be on the hook for.

The MaRS story raises doubts about all of the $4.2-billion in loans that IO had on its books at March 31, 2012. What are the updated risk qualifications on all of IO’s obligations?

It’s time for the Auditor General to conduct a review of both Infrastructure Ontario and the MaRS Discovery District and provide the taxpayers of the Province with the true picture of their financial position.

Parker Gallant is a retired bank executive.